6 Mind-Blowing Ways Genetic Engineering Might Save Your Life

Genetic engineering scares a lot of people, partly because we love making sci-fi movies and video games starring walking humanoid horrors that resulted from experiments gone wrong. And, while the idea of something like growing a human heart in a sheep's body just seems wrong somehow, it probably seems less wrong to the person who actually needs a heart transplant.

What we're trying to say is that as weird as it is, genetic engineering may save your life some day thanks to things like ...

#6. Organ Transplants. From Sheep.

"Holy shit! It's an actual sheeple! What part of it is human? The face? It's the face, isn't it?" But this deserves some explaining, because what they're doing is kind of amazing, and could save a whole bunch of lives.

The idea is to find another source for transplant organs, so that people don't sit on a long waiting list in hopes that some other person will die with a perfectly intact liver or heart (or whatever) before their own fails. The process they're using at the University of Nevada involves injecting human stem cells into a sheep fetus and no, this does not create a monstrous human/sheep hybrid ready to escape into the countryside and terrorize the, uh, grass.

GettyIf you were Saint Augustine, you'd be terrified right now.

Instead, the cells circulate through the sheep's system and alter its liver, heart, lungs and whatever else so that they have some human tissue and thus would (hopefully) be able to be transplanted into some sick kid somewhere.

And by the way, don't freak out over the idea of having an animal part in your body. Scientists have been using valves from pig hearts to repair humans for years, and this has resulted in not a single Batman villain.

#5. Disease Vaccinations Via Food

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Hey, do you like needles? Do you remember being a kid and getting stabbed with a different vaccination every year or so? How about if, instead of having a sharp metal object punched through your skin, you could get that disease fighting-power from the food you eat?

Getty"We're out of oranges. You'll have to bleed."

With the magic of genetic engineering, potatoes have been successfully modified to carry the vaccination for Hepatitis B -- a virus that infects about 350 million people a year, and kills a million of them.

GettyMeanwhile, potatoes are only deadly combined with grease and salt.

In the world of medicine, oral supplements are always preferable to injection -- needles have the nasty habit of spreading infection, especially in developing countries where sterilization practices might not be so great. Getting the vaccines into the food would make distribution a shitload safer, and easier. And the potatoes aren't just theory -- they've grown them and fed them to humans in trials, most of whom showed a boost in their immune response as a result.

GettySoon you'll be able to pig out and treat your syphilis at the same time.

By the way, if altering foods to make them naturally fight disease sounds crazy, keep in mind that this has already happened. Ever heard of iodized salt? You most likely have it in your kitchen. With only the tiniest of change in flavor, scientists were able to infuse regular table salt with iodine, which prevents things like mental retardation and goiters. So, yeah, if the changes can be done safely, disease-fighting food can change the world.

Getty"It's cocaine, infused with Vitamin B."

But even if humans aren't eating the modified food directly, it can still save lives. The people who started the cloning fad with Dolly the Sheep (the Roslin Institute) have figured out how to make chickens lay eggs with cancer-fighting proteins. You wouldn't eat them to cure your cancer -- they would replace the enormously expensive process pharmaceutical companies use now to grow those proteins (one reason cancer-fighting drugs are so costly). After saving countless lives, those same chickens could then presumably be safely killed, battered and fried.

GettyIt's delicious, and it prevents erectile dysfunction.

Ah, chickens, is there anything you can't do?

#4. Insulin Producing Flowers

Diabetes is a dick. Not only does it affect millions of people, but it's expensive as hell. America spends $132,000,000,000 on insulin alone. That's 132 billion dollars for a disease that is still spiraling out of control. And that's just insulin -- other diabetes treatments, supplies and research are costly, as well. Well, guess what? Fuck you, diabetes, because we just found a way to slash the cost of insulin.

Researchers from the University of Calgary have infused the human gene for insulin inside Canadian safflowers, allowing us to harvest insulin at a fraction of the current cost. And that's a big deal; the vast majority of diabetics simply can't afford insulin every year due to the complex and expensive method we currently use for growing insulin in the lab.

GettyIt's usually synthesized from Unicorns.

The key is that safflowers produce shiploads of the stuff -- about 2.2 pounds of insulin per acre. That might not sound like much, but its been determined by botanists that a mere 16,000 acres of safflower could produce enough insulin for the entire planet's diabetic population. Or to put it another way: That would mean you could give everyone insulin by converting 40 average-sized farms to safflower.

Unfortunately, this process isn't entirely without risks, and it's still in the testing phase for human use. There's still the danger of cross-pollination -- a dangerous side effect of genetically modified crops that has the potential to wreak irreparable damage upon local ecosystems. Cross pollination is what happens when wind currents pick up the seed of genetically engineered plants and carry them to unaltered flowers, damaging them and the offspring that grow as a result of the accidental pollination.